I laughed, more awake than I had been. “You could always use Robert,” I said. “Or move it to the end. Pick a new first name.”
“I wish I had a name like yours, Emily Solomon.”
While we were talking, he’d been running his hand lightly over my breasts under the covers, his fingertips playing against my skin the way they would dance on the frets of his guitar.
His touch made me shiver, and I rolled toward him, kissing away whatever the rest of the conversation held.
“I love you, no matter what your name is,” I said, before I slipped under the quilt, kissing down his chest, taking him into my mouth.
“Get back up here, Queenie,” he said, his voice halfway between a growl and a moan.
I kissed my way back up, until he bent and caught my mouth with his.
“You, you, you,” he said between kisses, as he slipped a condom on underneath the covers.
“Me, me, me,” I answered, as I wrapped my legs around him.
Our lovemaking was exuberant. We laughed as we kissed each other, twisting the bedsheets as we flipped and turned.
“Let’s try this,” he breathed, rolling us over.
“How about this?” I propelled myself forward, wrapping my legs tight around his waist.
It was always like this with us, experimenting, learning, unafraid to try new things, to figure out what worked for us. He was the first person I’d ever slept with; I was the second person he had. We loved exploring what we could do, how we could bend, finding our limits individually and as a couple.
That day we ended with me on my back, my feet against his chest as he stood next to the bed, rocking inside me. We orgasmed at just about the same time, calling out to each other in unintentional harmony.
When he pulled out to slide off the condom, for some reason I’ll never know, my mind flashed back to that night in the green room. “We didn’t use one,” I said, stopping him as he started walking to the wastepaper basket. “At Webster Hall. We didn’t use one.”
I could tell he was searching his mind, too, trying to put together the pieces of the night. “It’s probably fine,” he said finally.
I was trying to remember the last time I’d gotten my period. I was terrible at tracking it. There were so many other things going on—school and music and him and just dealing with life as a twenty-year-old whose mom had died three years before and who still hadn’t completely dealt with the loss.
“When did we play with the guys at Prohibition?” I asked him, as he sat down on the bed next to me. I remembered adding a panty liner before that show, just in case the set went long.
He picked up his phone and looked at the calendar. “I think it was about a month ago. It was a Friday night.”
“Can you count the days?” I asked him, already feeling my heart flutter.
“Twenty-six,” he answered, after staring at the screen on his phone for a moment.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “I haven’t missed my period yet,” I said.
But it didn’t come the next day, or the day after, or the day after that, either.
I started to panic.
13
A few days later, Emily slept in.
“I’m surprised the smell of the coffee didn’t wake you,” Ezra teased, when he kissed her awake after leaving a partially filled mug on her nightstand.
“What coffee?” she asked, sleepily, trying to stretch out her back. It’d been aching all night. Probably just the ligaments of her uterus stretching, Ezra had said, when she’d mentioned it at dinner. He didn’t seem too worried about the spot of blood she’d seen in her underwear either. “It happens in a lot of pregnancies,” he said, though it had really freaked her out, sent her heart racing.
Still, Emily had let his reassurances wash over her. Convince her she was fine. Forget about what had happened last time. At just about this far along, too.
“Did you lose your superpower?” he asked. His voice was light, but Emily could hear an undercurrent of worry.
“I guess so,” she said carefully. “Maybe it was just a first-six-weeks-of-pregnancy thing.”
“Maybe it was,” he conceded. He ran his hand down her body from shoulder to toes, on top of the blanket. “I have grand rounds today,” he said, “so I should go, but you’ll call me if you need me?”
Emily sat up, her back still aching. “You’re worried about me,” she said.
“It’s probably nothing,” he answered. “I’m not a gynecologist.”